Word has been flying round the internet about Intel's dodgy Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo'. Intel's Mooly Eden, VP, PC Client Group was attempting to demonstrate a racing game on a prototype laptop – 'ultrabook' - fitted with an upcoming 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor with a racing wheel attached and allegedly rendering DX11 graphics. However, as is very apparent at the start, it's actually a video, because the control panel for the free VLC video player pops up for a few seconds. Eden then 'drives' a car and after a few seconds puts up one hand and then the other, because as he says "they are driving it from backstage". However, there was no one driving the game "backstage", as it was just a video and Eden doesn't say anything about this at any point in the presentation.

This gives conspiracy theorists lots of ammunition, as perhaps the game was actually played on a high powered desktop PC with NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics cards? What game was it? Eden doesn't say. "IB can't really do these graphics!" they cry and so on. Sure, man 'didn't' go to the moon, either... However, we believe that while yes, there was a bit of deception going on, it was nothing more than a white(ish) lie. Why? Because Ivy Bridge comes out in April and people aren't going to forget this demo. They will immediately put IBs DX11 graphics to the test with similar games and if it doesn't deliver, Intel will have a lot of egg on its face. Here's what Intel had to say about this demo in an official statement:

We used a video in the DX11 Ivy Bridge-based Ultrabook demo simply for expediency at today's Intel press event at CES. We were extremely limited for time and didn’t want to lose any time by getting in and out of the game. And Mooly told the audience this at the end of the demo… a couple of people have posted video of the demo on YouTube and you can hear Mooly say that the demo was driven by the folks behind the stage because he was limited for time and then went on to explain the DX11 support in Ivy Bridge.

We first demonstrated the DX11 feature of Ivy Bridge at IDF last September. It runs extremely well. The demo can easily be reproduced live for anyone who wants to see it. We’d be happy to show it to you and let you play DX11 games the next time you are in Santa Clara.

Click to expand...

Well, whether one takes this statement at face value or not, the internet arena is a very unforgiving place and people don't like to be lied to, so the criticisms and conspiracy theories have been coming thick and fast, hence the best policy is total honesty in any presentation. Eden should have simply explained at the start that he was going to play a video demo for time/practicality purposes and no one would have batted an eyelid – this is Intel after all, not some unheard of company with no reputation and people would trust what was being explained to them. Probably the best thing that Intel could do right now to fix the fallout, is to give a real DX11 demo with that racing game, like they should have in the first place.

Note that this demo was actually preceded by a real time Havok render of a troll, as reported by AnandTech, which looked rather impressive.

Below, we have two high quality (720p/1080p) YouTube videos of the racing demo event, from different perspectives, to allow the reader to judge for themselves. The first one is courtesy of our source, IGN and the second posted by Bright Side of News.

UPDATE

Intel later did show AnandTech Formula 1 2011 running on a different laptop:

Yesterday we reported Intel ran a video of a DX11 title instead of running the actual game itself on a live Ivy Bridge notebook during Mooly Eden's press conference. After the press conference Intel let me know that the demo was a late addition to the presentation and they didn't have time to set it up live but insisted that it worked. I believed Intel (I spent a lot of time with Ivy Bridge at the end of last year and saw no reason to believe that DX11 functionality was broken) but I needed definitive proof that there wasn't some issue that Intel was trying to deliberately hide. Intel promptly invited me to check out the demo live on an Ivy Bridge notebook which I just finished doing.

Click to expand...

The notebook isn't the exact same one as used by Mooly Eden, but this alternative one certainly did show the game running on Intel HD Graphics 4000, which is what the embedded IGP in Ivy Bridge is called:

Ivy Bridge engineering sample:

And finally, a video of the demo itself:

And as you can see, it's playing it just fine. There will no doubt be some great laptops based on Ivy Bridge and is certainly something to look forward to.

Here's the thing though, why did Intel bother themselves to go trough all this trouble?
They could have just said: "Ivy Bridge's GPU can render/run DX11 games in ultrabooks."
Intel fanboys would be all like: "Oh yeah!" "Int3lz is the b35tz!!" "Take that AMD!"
The rest of us: "We will patiently wait for benchmarks."

I'm fully willing to believe their new toy can play games that well, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still a very awkward, somewhat entertaining display of dishonesty. Hell, even if it had been convincing and we'd found out afterwards that it was a video I don't think it'd be getting as much attention as it is. It's only because the demonstration was such a metaphorical car crash from start to finish that this is spreading across the internet like wildfire.

Either it can run it or it can't. This was a stupid idea on Intel's part. If isn't ready, pull an AMD and do paper launches. This just speaks that they are not confident in it. Now whether that is hardware related, or driver...still remains to be seen. My money would be on hardware, but you can't dismiss Intel's poor drivers either.

If your really bothered by this then you have a problem, companies play games like this all the time (pun not intended).
Proof will be in the pudding, sure its DX11 compatible but that doesnt mean it will run DX 11 games well does it? Im more interested in Ivy Bridge power usage.

Either it can run it or it can't. This was a stupid idea on Intel's part. If isn't ready, pull an AMD and do paper launches. This just speaks that they are not confident in it. Now whether that is hardware related, or driver...still remains to be seen. My money would be on hardware, but you can't dismiss Intel's poor drivers either.

Mistakes happen at conventions all the time. I do think Intel should have clarified it was a video from the beginning and explained the whole time constraints thing. They clearly tried to be a little deceptive which is just wrong...